Russia’s ‘Hidden Unemployed’ Now Coming Out of Shadows as One in Seven Russians has Fallen into This Group

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 3 – Moscow has long kept its reported unemployment figures extremely low because it counts as fully employed not only those with full-time jobs but those whose employment per day or per week has been cut back as well as those who have been sent on unpaid leave.

            But as the Russian economy has slipped into recession, the share of working-age Russians who form part of what many observers call “hidden unemployment” has risen dramatically. Now, according to Russia’s Federation of Independent Trade Unions, such people form 14.4 percent of the workforce (ehorussia.com/new/node/34057).

            If one adds even half of these to the official unemployment numbers, this means that ten percent of Russians are unemployed, with a majority of those not receiving any compensation from the government or their employers to help them cope and thus falling ever more often and rapidly into poverty.

            As even the Russian government’s Rossiyskaya Gazeta has acknowledged, this figure or at least one close to it better reflects the problems that now plague the country’s civilian economy, even though many Russian propagandists and Western observers continue to cite the much lower “official” unemployment numbers (rg.ru/2026/02/01/v-rezhime-ozhidaniia.html).